If the constant news cycle has taught us anything, it’s that next reigns supreme. What will next year bring? Which player(s) will boom? Which will bust? We fascinate ourselves with the unknown; live for what may be. Want it all. Now.
Shakespeare spoke to this notion some 400 years ago; his eponymous tragic hero, Macbeth, enthralled by prophecies’ promises. But it’s what happens later that we must heed. Castle seized upon, wife dead, his own death a nearing formality, he soliloquises about the meaninglessness of it all:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.